While not at all news that the Catholic Church has been abusing the bankruptcy laws of the United States to protect their assets from victims, the sheer scale of it is definitely noteworthy.
$2 Billion total in assets to this point protected from victims.
The bankruptcy laws can be modified.
Raise the priority level of abuse victims among the total list of creditors.
Severely limit the ability to discharge abuse judgments in bankruptcy.
Restructure liability, so as to give victims the ability to pursue any diocese or arch-diocese in the country for satisfaction of a judgement, not merely the diocese or arch-diocese immediately involved.
It is bad enough the Catholic Church has been so slow to respond to the issue in the first place. Then they have the nerve to abuse the bankruptcy laws to screw their victims out of rightful judgments.
In my opinion much bigger issue are the ongoing problems with sex abuse in public schools, which are protected as government entities that are supported by federal, state, and local taxpayers.
An example of the problem is the ongoing scandal involving hundreds of cases of abuse involving adults working in Chicago Public Schools. In many cases, the alleged abusers were protected by the school administration and/or unions, and the national news media have generally ignored the story. Even now the school system is dragging it feet on implementing safeguards that have been in place for decades in the Catholic churches and schools.
For background and additional links see:
My understanding is that public schools frequently have sovereign immunity and other legal protections against lawsuits. My opinion is that public schools need to face the same liabilities and scrutiny that Catholic institutions already face, and public schools need to be held to the same standards for protecting children from abuse.
But it’s also important to contextualize what led to the changes in state law. Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Public Schools officials for months fought records requests from Tribune reporters on sexual assaults within schools. CPS only relented under threat of a lawsuit. It’s important to remember that the documents City Hall and CPS eventually provided were heavily, ridiculously, redacted. It was not an exercise in protecting students. It was an exercise in CYA.
Where is the media? Oh yeah…more important things. Trump had 2 scoops of ice cream.
When I researched the Chicago scandal many months ago, about the only report that I could find in the national media was about one of the many alleged abusers, who happened to be a former Catholic priest. Apparently the national media only cares about abuse when it involves the Catholic Church.
The pushing of a political narrative/agenda by the liberal MSM is getting scarier everyday because I hear more and more sheople bleeting what they’ve been fed. At the same time, so much that is absolutely wrong, is being ignored?
The most widely cited study available, conducted in 2004 by the U.S. Education Department, estimated that 1-in-10 students will be sexually abused by a teacher during their years in school. One-in-10.
Apparently conservatives only care about abuse when they can rail against liberals. Have a problem with sexual abuse in schools? Start a thread about it. Sheesh.
What does this have to do with the topic of this thread? The Catholic Church hiding billions in treasure to avoid paying out to victims of Catholic priest sex abuse.
Very disappointing to see the Papists rally around their church and instead make a stupid deflection to the public schools.
This thread is about Papistry and the abuse that occurred in Papist churches and schools and further about the Papist abuse of bankruptcy laws to evade responsibility.
If somebody wants to speak of public schools, make a thread.
And I don’t care if anybody doesn’t like the pejorative Papist. It is all they deserve to be called at this point.
BTW, I am not singling out the Papists for criticism, not by a long shot.
The Southern Baptists also have an atrocious record on sexual abuse of children and have not taken the lead in dealing with it.
